


Thieves of Mercy

by executrix



Category: Hamlet - Fandom, Shakespeare - Fandom, crossover - Fandom
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-09
Updated: 2011-09-09
Packaged: 2017-10-23 13:52:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/251022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ever wondered just *who* those pirates were that Hamlet encountered?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thieves of Mercy

THIEVES OF MERCY

Jayne said, “Well, howdy-do, this ship ain’t quite as all empty and derelicted as you said it was, Mal,” at the same time as Gil turned to his partner and said, “I’m glad our old buddy is just sitting there sulking instead of **doing** anything” only to be told “There are two of us and only one of him.”

Gil was just saying, “But he has been in continual practice,” when Zoe grappled the shuttle onto the flyer.

“Open up, or we’ll tack mag mines onto your hull, back off, and blow you to hell,” Mal said over the frequency they had commandeered.

“What good would **that** do you?” R.K. demanded.

“Blowin’ stuff up…never not fun,” Mal said. “Anyway, it’d give you a one-way ticket to a place nobody comes back from.”

“You’d be surprised,” came a new voice over the comm.

The flyer’s door opened, so Mal, Zoe, and Jayne, all brandishing weaponry, stepped through. They saw two men in the flyer’s tiny cockpit. Another man, wearing a sea-gown sashed over a black suit, drew his sword and stood between Zoe and Jayne. “Four against two,” he said. “We will win at the odds.”

“Whaddaya you mean ‘we’?” Jayne asked

“It is I, Hamlet the Dane,” said the man on their side of the flyer.

“Huh,” Mal said. All three of the men were blond, with icy blue eyes, although the two on the other side were noticeably larger and more muscular.

“Wait a minute,” Zoe said. “Didn’t you guys play for Wittenberg? The Fightin’ Lutherans?”

They nodded modestly.

Mal picked up the thread of the discussion despite this sporting interruption. “So, if you’re the prince and all, there’d be the potential for a sizeable ransom?”

“You would, once again, be cast into amazement,” Hamlet said. “A **world** of no.”

Gil relaxed a little, hoping that the intruders, baulked of their ransom, would simply kill Hamlet. Then he and R.K. could go back to Elsinore, skipping Londinium entirely, and make their play for plum jobs in the Claudius Administration.

“Fine, let’s just shoot ‘em all and grab the flyer, sell it for parts,” Jayne said.

Mal debated with himself how he felt about killing folks that weren’t much risk of harm.

“I have the royal signet of Denmark,” Hamlet said. “I could use it to grant you pardons, give you safe-conduct, exculpate your crimes…”

“Hey, thanks for the heads-up,” Jayne said. “’Cause you don’t gotta be breathin’ for us to use it.”

“Jayne!” Zoe said. “Why don’t we take ‘em all back with us, sort it out there? You’n’me take His Princeness back with us in the shuttle. Jayne can bring the Two Horsemen back with him.” Her tone of voice made it clear that if Jayne chose to run off with them and the flyer that was their intended salvage, she could live with the loss.

Mal always liked to bring Kaylee back a little something from a job, and they hadn’t had time to go to market, and he thought she’d think Emo Boy was pretty cute, whether or not he was a genuine prince.

An hour later, they were all back on Serenity. While Kaylee ran off a duplicate signet ring on the lathe, Hamlet multi-tasked between giving the Shepherd a hearsay account of Purgatory and staging a two-nation Weirdness Olympics with River.

After awhile, Wash noticed that nothing had been heard from Jayne or the prisoners for awhile. Then Jayne walked in, his t-shirt inside-out, poured himself a mug of water, and gulped it down loudly.

“What happened to…?” Wash began.

“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern?” Jayne smirked. “Dead to the world.”

 _They have dealt with me like thieves of mercy, but they knew what they did_ (IV, vi, 20-21)

 _Groped I to find out them, had my desire,  
Fingered their packet, and in fine withdrew  
To mine own room again_ (V, ii, 13-15)

 _Why, man, they did make love to this employment_ (V,ii, 57)


End file.
